“Joseph!  Joseph! don’t you know me?” said she.  “I am your wife.  I am here with you.”

“Poor Mary!” he murmured, sadly, not understanding what was said.  “If she knew all, it would break her heart.”

“What would break her heart?” quickly asked his wife.

“Poor Mary!  She said she would never marry”—­here the sick man’s voice became inarticulate.

But all was clear to the mind of Mrs. Fletcher.  She remembered how often she had made the thoughtless remark to which her husband evidently referred.  The tears again fell over her cheeks, until they dropped even upon the face of her husband, who, after he had said this, muttered for a while, inarticulately, and then, closing his eyes, went off into sleep.

Toward morning a slight moisture broke out all over him, and his sleep that was heavy, became soft and tranquil.  The crisis was past!  In order not to disturb the quiet slumberer, Mrs. Fletcher sat down by the bedside perfectly still.  It was not very long before, over-wearied as she was, sleep likewise stole over her senses.  It was daylight when she was awakened by hearing her name called.  Starting up, she met the face of her husband turned earnestly toward her.

“Dear husband!” she exclaimed, “do you know me?”

“Yes, Mary.  But how came you here?” he said, in a feeble voice.

“We will speak of that at some other time,” she replied.  “Enough that I am here, where I ought to have been ten days ago.  But that was not my fault.”

Fletcher was about to make some farther remark, when his wife placed her finger upon his lips, and said—­

“You must not talk, dear; your disease has just made a favourable change, and your life depends upon your being perfectly quiet.  Enough for me to say that I know all, and love you just as well, perhaps better.  You are a weak, foolish man, Joseph,” she added, with a smile, “or else thought me a weak and foolish woman.  But all that we can settle hereafter.  Thank God that I have found you; and that you are, to all appearances, out of danger.”

Aunt Prudence looked into Kate’s face, and saw that tears were on her cheeks.

“Would you have loved him less, Kate,” she asked, “if he had been your husband?”

“He would have been the same to me whatever might have been his calling.  That could not have changed him.”

“No, certainly not.  But I have a word or two more to add.  As soon as Fletcher was well enough to go to work, he took his place again upon the shop-board, his wife feeling happier than she had felt for a long time.  In about six months he rose to be foreman of the shop, and a year after that became a partner in the business At the end of ten years he sold out his interest in the business, and returned to the East with thirty thousand dollars in cash.  This handsome capital enabled him to get into an old and well-established mercantile house as partner, where he remained until his death.  About the time of his return to the East, you, Kate, were born.”